‘He Was Like, ‘What Are You Talking About?”: Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher Opens Up on Meeting James Hetfield

“I was like, ‘Thank you for teaching me how to play guitar.’ And he was like, ‘What are you talking about?'”

Bill Kelliher recalled the moment he met Metallica’s James Hetfield, whom he thanked for teaching him to play the guitar, and Kirk Hammett & Robert Trujillo, who asked him to take a picture with them.Regardless of one’s opinion on the old adage about never meeting one’s idols, such experiences are bound to be fraught with awkwardness for people not accustomed to being in the spotlight. Even for someone like Bill Kelliher, a riff machine for one of the world’s most prominent metal bands, remaining composed is never easy, he explains in a new interview on “The Rockman Power Hour Podcast”

In his case, however, the fact that he’s befriended many of his childhood idols makes the dynamic even more interesting (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):

“You’ve just gotta be cool. Sometimes it’s hard because now it’s good friends. I’ve been talking about a long time with Paige Hamilton [from Helmet]. I was like, This guy’s in one of the greatest bands I’ve ever listened to, and we were hanging out for a week; he came to visit me and he wanted some help writing his new record. Back, I remember I was pinching myself… If you click, you click, but you can’t be [a] weirdo, [because] it’s going to make them feel awkward.”

However, that weirdness can’t help but creep in, if only for how confusing things can get, especially when you’re a rock star on the rise. In the same interview, Kelliher recalled there being some confusion when he met James Hetfield, and doubly so after stumbling across Papa Het’s compadres Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo, wanted to take a picture with Kelliher — rather than the other way around.

Noting how he approached Hetfield by giving him a compliment that could easily be misunderstood if taken literally, Kelliher said:

“It was funny when I first met Hetfield, who’s been an idol of mine. I think it was Portugal or some big festival we were doing, and I shook his hand. I was like, ‘Thank you for teaching me how to play guitar.’ And he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Like, ‘You know what I’m talking about. You paved the way for me to learn all your songs…’

“And then, when I met Kirk and Robert, they were walking around together and they saw me, and they came running over and they’re like, ‘Hey, man, what’s up? Can we get a picture with you?’ I was like, ‘This is a joke. *I* should get pictures! You guys are Metallica!’ I’m just fucking Bill from Mastodon! It was wild. They kind of turned the tables on me.”